Is your jaw aching from endlessly masticating your nicotine-laced gum? Do you have weird circles marring your tan where your nicotine patch has hidden you away from the sun? If conventional anti-smoking therapies aren’t for you, don’t give up on giving up. It’s no easy feat. The Times’ Dr Thomas Stuttaford says, “It is depressingly difficult to stop smoking unless the person is prompted to do so by an illness associated with it.” But as the choice can be to quit or die trying, if you are willing to brave the fact that their effectiveness is unverified, there are plenty of alternative methods for you to try.

Don’t expect miracles, though. According to Dr Tom, “Alternative treatments are not only likely to be a failure; some might be actively dangerous.” But if you are willing to ignore the potential for health risks and wasting your dosh (which, if you smoke is what you do daily anyway), you might just find that strapping on electrodes or exercising your mind in a paddling pool gives you incentive to give up for good.

BIORESONANCE

Prisoners on death row often request just one last cigarette. You’ll do the same with this quitting method: smoke that fag down to the filter, savouring every last carcinogenic puff, as well as saving every last crumbling flake of ash in a glass jar. Gob a dollop of phlegm in there and you’ve concocted the brew that will be instrumental in obtaining your death row pardon: ending your addiction. The glass canister is inserted into a whirring machine to which you are connected by wires taped to your head and electrodes you hold in your hands. Shahbaz Saleem, Director of Smoking Relief UK, a bioresonance centre in Docklands, says it works by “reading the electromagnetic frequency of the cigarette you smoked [combined with saliva in the canister] and sends out the reverse frequency. That causes the body to release the toxins and detox.” It claims to change the workings of dopamine receptors, those cells that respond to the pleasurable chemical dopamine that drugs and fags get pumping, by making them eschew the nicotine-induced pleasure they once had us crave. To put it simply, it changes the nature of your “bad” cells (the ones that crave nicotine, fast cars and bad men…ok, only one of those is supposedly true, but we can dream!) into the “good” squeaky clean and abstemious cells mum would approve of.

HYPNOTISM

“Liiieeee baaaack. You are getting very sleeeeeepy….” Hypnosis has come a long way from the creepy practitioner dangling a pocket watch pendulum in front of your lids. Now it more closely resembles a standard therapy session, where you are asked questions such as, “There was a time in your life where you did not give the slightest thought about smoking. Do you remember what it was like then and how you felt about smoking?”, and digging deep into what emotional impulses you harbour that make you need the smelly sticks. Hypnotherapists say that a crucial element is that the smoker has to truly want to give up smoking, otherwise cracking open the psyche can have the opposite effect: solidifying your resolve to light up. At the session, be prepared to chat a bit and then lie back and through imagination exercises have your unconscious exposed and gently prodded towards the conclusion that smoking is yucky. Sure, you knew that before, but did your id?

ELECTRONIC AIDES

Sick of that nagging urge to smoke? Well now, you can trade that nicotine-induced buzzing in your head for an actual nagging buzz from your pocket. It’s called QuitKey (formerly LifeSign) and with a beeping reminder, it tells you to smoke. Too good to be true, you say: a stop smoking device that instructs you to get out your Marlboros? Spend a week with the QuitKey and light up at your normal rate, inputting every instance when you go for a ciggy into the small contraption. The tiny electronic device calculates an algorithm specifically tailored to your nicotine needs and sets off an alarm at precisely the moment your body is going to begin craving. Day by day the beeps get fewer and farther between (to the relief of your spouse and anyone who spends time within in a ten-foot radius of you) gently letting the addictive substance peter out of your blood stream and eventually ripping you away from your habit. Unless you smash the beeping bugger under your boot heel first.

PILL POPPING

Before you head to your friendly neighbourhood pharmacist for some of the “wonderdrug” Zyban or Chantix, the prescription anti-smoking pills that don’t use nicotine, be warned. The dire warnings on cigarette packets seem mild in comparison. Take a look at Zyban’s information sheet, for instance. It warns against potential “hallucinations and redness, blistering, peeling or loosening of the skin, including inside the mouth.” I’ll take cancer, thank you. But Dr. Stuttaford champions the highly effective Chantix because, “it kids the brain into believing it already had a cigarette.” But if you can’t abide the potential side effects, there are a host of anti-smoking pills out there. However, none of these products require a licence under the Medicines Act and are largely unregulated. Early clinical trials show that pure and simple glucose tablets – cousins to good old sugar cubes – might quell cravings. If that sounds too benign, try dubiously effective Nicobrevin, which contains camphor and eucalyptus oil. It also has a splash of quinine, which, even if you don’t end up quitting smoking, will clear any malaria right up.

FLOATATION THERAPY

There are two ways in which floatation therapy could help you quit smoking. 1) It is simply too difficult in a lukewarm tank of water to get a match lit. 2) You rewire your brain. In a floatation session punters are closed into a small cubical to bob about in a tank of 10” of water suffused with Epsom salt so that a Dead Sea effect is created – you float effortlessly. While drifting like a foetus in amniotic fluid, your brain can be induced into the state of high creativity that usually occurs just before you fall asleep or pass into a deep meditative state. Brainwaves produced in this state are called Theta Waves. They’ll make you one joyful piece of flotsam as they stimulate your body into pumping endorphins. The tenuous link here is that you’re so suffused with these biological opiates that you don’t need to seek out other tobacco-based sources to get your jollies. Those opting for a cheaper version might try their hand with a bathtub and a packing crate of table salt.